NetflixViewers have been “shattered” by Eulogy, an emotional new episode in the seventh season of Charlie Brooker’s series, starring Paul Giamatti.
Since 2011, Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones’ dystopian anthology series, Black Mirror, has presented 34 stories about the dark side of technology: how computer systems and digital gadgets might distort, warp and even end life for humans.
There have been the shocking, twist-filled episodes – a prime minister is forced to have intercourse with a pig on live TV to release a kidnapped princess (National Anthem); a woman chased by bounty hunters on a sadistic reality TV show is revealed to be a child-killer (White Bear) – but every so often, there’s a tale that transcends the “what if technology went bad?” theme and instead manages to capture the multi-layered nuances of human existence.
This gentle, more emotional side to Black Mirror has previously emerged in several fan-favourite episodes, such as San Junipero, released in 2016: a love story between two young women set in the 80s, that is later revealed to be a simulated reality where the dead and the still living can co-exist together online. Be Right Back (2013) was prescient in its explorations of AI, and how the experience of grief might lead someone to create a computer-generated version of their loved one. And themes of infidelity and sexual obsession viewed through an embedded memory “grain” were explored with devastating results in 2011’s The Entire History of You, written by Succession’s Jesse Armstrong.
And while there’s always a place for slightly silly, catastrophising predictions of the endgame of computers and the internet (Plaything and Common People in season seven are decent new examples of this), Black Mirror excels when the technology is just one part of the story, not the point of the story. The newest series appears to recognise this, and is perhaps the most heartfelt and emotional of the entire catalogue. With three of the seven episodes centred around a love story, however, it’s episode five, Eulogy, which has been the standout, quietly devastating viewers on the day of its release.
“Eulogy broke me in a very particular way I wasn’t expecting,” one viewer wrote on X, while another said it was “an utterly heartbreaking yet fantastic piece of television… just beautifully painful”. Another user added: “Truly incredible from every standard possible. I’ve been crying for the last 5 minutes… Heartbreak can’t even scrape the surface of what this has made me feel.” Another was still in recovery from the viewing: “It ha[d] me sobbing. And I mean heavy, fat tears.”
The critics agree. Stylist’s Kayleigh Dray said, “Eulogy shattered me, and I can’t stop thinking about it,” while Ben Rosenstock from Vulture added that it was the “most heartbreaking episode of the season”. GameRant‘s Aayush Sharma called it “the best episode of Black Mirror Season 7… Paul Giamatti is EXCEPTIONAL”, and Jake Kleinman from Huffington Post said: “It might even be the best Black Mirror episode in years.”
Eulogy – co-written by Brooker and Ella Road – indeed features a captivating performance from Giamatti as Phillip, an older man who is asked if he’ll use a digital chip to access his memories to create a eulogy for the funeral of Carol Royce, a girlfriend who broke his heart in his 20s.
The technology set-up is just one impressive strand of this episode as the special effects featured allow Phillip to “jump” into old photos, exploring the recreated scene around him. But it’s the world-building outside of these merged live-action and CGI scenes that is truly affecting. Piece by piece, the story of Phillip and Carol’s relationship and break-up is revealed through his old images and mementos – how it was fractured by him having an affair; the subsequent dramatic proposal he orchestrates in London; and his humiliation when she walks out on him, never to be heard from again.
His resulting emotional turmoil is palpable, especially in Giamatti’s powerful monologues. But with the help of an avatar “guide” (played by Patsy Ferran) in the Eulogy digital chip, Phillip discovers information that gives him a brand new perspective that could have changed the course of his and Carol’s lives – but which, tragically, has come too late.
Brooker told Vulture that Eulogy is meant to be a companion piece to Be Right Back and The Entire History of You, and examines the blinding, subjective nature of hindsight: “We were talking about memory and photography, and how an individual’s take on memory might deceive them in terms of who they feel is the villain in their life.” He added to Rolling Stone: “It’s somebody using technology to revisit the past and come out with a slightly different perspective and put some ghosts to rest.”
Brooker also revealed that the loss of his own father – and having to read the eulogy at his funeral – had made the subject even more poignant for him. Eulogy, like much of the anthology, plays with the idea of nostalgia. For Phillip, however, this nostalgia has curdled; any good memories he might have had of Carol have been mentally and physically destroyed by him, leaving him quietly seething with regret and bitterness for almost 30 years.
As is almost customary for Black Mirror characters – and in life itself, perhaps – there is no neat, happy ending in Eulogy, but Phillip is given a bittersweet moment of cathartic acceptance, which is what is really resonating with viewers. As Giamatti told Rolling Stone on reading the script for Eulogy: “I was really moved by it at the end, which doesn’t always happen to me.” Even the most cynical of Black Mirror fans would have to agree that this might be the most heartfelt episode yet.
Black Mirror season seven is available on Netflix.
